Just beat DS3 (base game) for the first time, here are my thoughts.

Context: I haven’t played any of the other ds games, but I do know the lore from watching lore videos on YouTube lol. This also isn’t my first time ever playing ds3, pontiff made me rage quit my first time playing lol. I also followed a walkthrough for the game (I prefer the combat aspect of this game rather than the exploration) and I tried to actually have a good build. I went for the strength soft cap at 66 with the heavy exile greatsword plus a lot of armor and poise to be able to trade hits with enemies.

Things I Loved: The boss fights were fantastic and even the ones I found more boring like the deacons and frustrating like the nameless king’s first phase or all of Aldrich (nightmare) were still very fun.

The lore/story of this game is insane. I immediately fell in love with it and I regard it as the best video game world building I have ever seen, and one of the best fictional worlds ever.

The build variety is super cool, and seeing videos of people using different attunements and weapons makes me want to replay the game (I used a grand total of 0 spells the whole game lol, never leveled up any stat pertaining to magic)

Music: this one is self-explanatory lol

The messages and bloodstains

Things I Didn’t Love: The side quests felt super annoying and hard to do, and I didn’t even bother with some of them because of it, which sucks because some of the side quests are really cool.

Running back to boss arenas felt tedious for the sake of being tedious. Where a lot of bosses felt very organically difficult, the run back to their arena felt very artificially difficult. In my opinion, I see no issue with their being a super close bonfire to each boss so that way you can get back to the action fast (and yes I know that shortcuts exist, I would rather have a close bonfire though)

Irithyll dungeon and those stupid jailers lol

Other Notes: Most I died to a boss was to the dancer, which was about 8-10 times. I beat wolnir, crystal sage, abyss watchers, pontiff (somehow lol, probably got lucky with him targeting phantom anri, also very ironic because he made me rage quit my first playthrough long ago), deacons, and Greatwood on my first attempt.

My favorite fights were soul of cinder, abyss watchers, champion gundyr, and the dancer.

Least favorite fights were deacons, greatwood, ancient wyvern, and Aldrich.

General summary of my build: Heavy Exile Greatsword +10, knight ring (which gave me max strength), ring of Havel, ring of favor, the prisoner’s chain (from champ gundyr), and the lothric knight armor sets.